Photography - Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year

The results are in (have been for a while) for the Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. So if you live in London, you can go to the museum (Natural History Museum) and check out the expo, but for the rest of us for whom London is entirely too far away, they've put a large number of awesome pictures online for our viewing pleasure. : D

Here are just some of the ones that caught my eye, for more check out the site by clicking here!

"Blast off"

"Evening rays"

"Heavenly view" doesn't this one just look like an awesome ink painting?

"Relaxation"

"Warning night light"

Multimedia - NY Times "One in 8 million"

In the old news category, here's something I discovered that I had missed when it happened in 2009.

The NY Times did this awesome photo+audio series about real people in NY talking about themselves and their lives. It's called "One in 8 million". You may have heard of it because it won an emmy in the "New approaches to documentary" category in 2010. 


I'm not going to rip the audio from their site, but here are 4 people with their profile pictures to give you an idea...
They're all interesting character studies, probably of interest to anyone studying people, or interested in representing people in fiction. Click here to start exploring this interesting project and begin meeting some of the 54 people depicted in it.
Also, if you're into that kind of thing the way I am, you gotta dig all those awesome accents!

"To play for people is everything. When they come to you they are suddenly in this world you've created"

"She asked me what kind of plant it was so I said it was an eggplant, and she said, "So that where we get our eggs from?" and that's when I noticed a lot of kids in NY don't know where their food comes from you know?"

"Sometimes when I cook I don't taste... I just know."

"And a woman said, "I know you, you're an actress...""

Photography - Pop spots by Bob Egan

I discovered this via Katie Hosmer's post on my modern metropolis.
Bob Egan finds and shoots the locations used for iconic album covers and superimposes the two.
In each instance you get a bit of info on how he found the spot, and the history behind the location.
It's all quite neatly done! Check out his website for more.
(P.S. clicking on any of these pictures should send you directly to the corresponding post on Bob Egan's site)

West Side Story

Bob Dylan... And who is that gentleman on the left?
Visit Bob Egan's site to find out!
The truth can't be beat! Or can it?

Bily Joel, An Innocent Man.

Bruce Springsteen

Photography - Katie Hosmer

A while back, doing my daily run through My Modern Met (very nice website by the way), I came across a post by Katie Hosmer, I thought I'd share the contents of the post with y'all, but whilst digging around about the OP (original poster) I found out she was a professional photographer in her own right, and as I perused her galleries, I found out that I rather liked her pictures better than what I was originally going to post about! So check out Katie Hosmer's work like these:

Hit up her MyModernMet profile and her photography website (specifically the galleries) to find out more about her!

Science - Unfortunate sex lives of bananas

I don't really have much to say about this asides from the fact that it's pretty damn interesting (source).
So forget about the tawdry sex lives of fictional characters from your favorite TV shows for a moment and click on the link to get the inside scoop on bananas or, alternatively, you could split. At any rate, there's no need to go ban... Enough banana jokes. : j
Click here to read a well written articles about bananas! It's a good read, hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Infographic -Logical fallacies

I don't remember where I found this, but this is where it is from.

I find it interesting how clever or trained people know how to use these to manipulate conversations, whilst others fall into these unwittingly and actually weaken their position in a discussion because of them, but only if the people they addressing have critical and analytical minds.

I name no name and point no fingers, but amongst a human history of examples, a current example of a place rife with logical fallacy (and repeatedly, though ineffectively called out for it) would be a certain vulpine TV network. ; j

(for an easier to read version, click here)

Art - Mengyu "Jenny" Chen

So this neat artist/photographer/designer/all-around-creative person is getting around the net...
Her name is Mengyu "Jenny" Chen. Her website is here.

I first saw her work over on laughingsquid, and she's been cropping up all over the place for the following gifs:

 Which are all neat, but there's a lot more cool stuff on her website.

She's apparently a part of a project to save the last Polaroid production plant to keep instant photography alive. So they made ads for magazines that are to be realized on card-stock imitating the look and feel of actual Polaroids, here's one below.

Or you could check out her illustrations:

Or her photography, or crafts etc.
Basically, check out her website, you might enjoy it!

By the way. New mail link is on the top left.
Feel free to ignore or use it as you see fit. : j

Photography - Simulator

I found this neat little app via IZ Reloaded (source).
It essentially lets one experiment with camera settings and see what happens.
I would have loved to have had this back when I was first learning to take pictures, and when, of course, I had to buy film and have it developed to do so.

 At any rate, it's fun to play with, and even more so if you aren't used to having control over your shots.

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In other news, the format of this blog is going to be changing soon.
Basically, I'm going to turn comments off and add a email link for those who absolutely want to get back to me.

Thanks for reading.
In conclusion, here is a picture of a sleeping kitty:

Video - When Jacob met Tyler Gregory's guitar

Jacob is eight years old, seeing-impaired, autistic, and seems to dig the midnight special.
I don't want to over-think it, I just want to enjoy the goodness of the moment...

The musician's name is Tyler Gregory, you can visit his website here.
(found on reddit)

Video - Ads of awesomeness

One or two people have asked me where I come up with the stuff I post, which was why I was going to post a list of some of the places where I hang out online (ie check daily). But going through my daily ritual of combing through my list of sites, I found two neat ads that I figured I would share with y'all immediately. So I reckon the link post will occur some time in the future.

In a regular sleepy town somewhere in Belgium, Turner decided to do the following:

via geeks are sexy


Check out Casey Neistat's(the creator) youtube channel, he has some other neat vids!

Video - Hip to Potter

Trends have always piqued my curiosity. Why does one story that has all the elements of another become a mainstream hit whilst the another, potentially superior (at least in my mind), does not?
Yes, marketing, circumstance, timing, etc.
There is a different cocktail of reasons in each case.
I have always been interested to observe how major trends come and go, perhaps because I exist on the fringe it's easier for me to do so... It's certainly easier to observe them as an outsider than to try and chase them and conform to them as an insider.
Here's a look at the lighter side of that phenomenon.



Link to the youtube channel of its makers: The Get Go UCB

Science - NSF vizualization challenge

I was originally going to make this a picture post, but then I found a neat video that encapsulates what this is about. So lets start with that. For best effect, full screen the video (click on the little icon that looks like a frame on the bottom right of the vid). 



So what is this about? Straight for their website:
"Some of science's most powerful statements are not made in words. From the diagrams of DaVinci to Rosalind Franklin's X-rays, visualization of research has a long and literally illustrious history. To illustrate is to enlighten.

How many people would have heard of fractal geometry or the double helix or solar flares if they had been described solely in words? In a world where science literacy is dismayingly rare, illustrations provide the most immediate and influential connection between scientists and other citizens, and the best hope for nurturing popular interest. Indeed, they are now a necessity for public understanding of research developments.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the journal Science created the International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge to celebrate that grand tradition--and to encourage its continued growth. The spirit of the competition is to communicate science, engineering and technology for education and journalistic purposes."

Their homepage is here.
Archive of winning entries dating back to 2003 is here.
Well worth having a look if you don't feel like watching the video or if you want more.

Of course, the concept itself is awesome, but one of the many things I really like about these, is the way they demonstrate that aesthetic beauty can be found beyond the scope of what is commonly accepted as such. Science is undoubtedly one of the many ways an observer can achieve a different appreciation of the world around us.
Oh, and I also dig how alien some of these shots seem.

Here are some of my favorites in no particular order (clicking on the captions brings up a popup telling you more about what the picture is):

Autofluorescence of Tick Nymph on a Mammalian Host
Credit: Marna E. Ericson, University of Minnesota

The Synapse Revealed
Credit: Graham Johnson, Graham Johnson Medical Media

Back to the Future
Credit: Mario De Stefano, Antonia Auletta and Carla Langella; Second University of Naples

Zoom into the Human Bloodstream
Credit: Linda Nye and the Exploratorium Visualization Laboratory, The Exploratorium

Photography - Snapping some shots during a midnight flight through asphalt skies

Here's something a little different from my usual PGPG posts. Last night I went out for a leisurely midnight flight through the city.
I took some pictures- clichéed clichées perhaps.
After a bit of encouragement from Khnoum, I figured I'd post some of them. They're in the order they were taken, so if anyone cared or knew Paris well enough, they could track my loop through Paris.

(click on any pic to enlarge)

Side view of the Opera Garnier

The Seine looking like an impressionist painting thanks to the mist

Quai Conti, maybe...

Bizarre storefront on the boulevard St Germain (no, I'm not saying what shop it is. ;))

Place de la Concorde

Passerelle Solferino, thank you google maps.

Outside the Jardins des Tuileries

A lion in the night on mane street. ; p
Mane street is just off of place Charles de Gaulle.

Boulevard Pereire

Porte Maillot

2h15mins and 16kms later it was time to hit the sack.

Video - Apocalypse later, surf now

I love the idea and the feeling in this video.
The idea that things of global magnitude can occur and be almost irrelevant on a personal scale.



There is something grandly self absorbed in saying "Screw you" to the end of the world.
"I was surfing yesterday, I'll surf today, and tomorrow I die with a smile".

Keef70's youtube channel.

Art - Two galleries from retronauts

I wasn't quite sure how to categorize this post, and I eventually settled on calling it art.
I recently stumbled onto a site called retronaut, which features thematic retro photo galleries.
Lots of interesting stuff there.

Here are some samples (click on the titles to get the whole enchilada) from two galleries I thought y'all might enjoy.


Cartoons Vs. Old masters

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Alternate history by Matthew Buchholz (fullsize to read the caption, it makes the image)

If you like Matthew Buchholz, check out his etsy shop in which you can see many more of his creations (he has a cute picture in his etsy profile).